[top] BLUE MOONLIT AURORAS: Last night, a Blue Moon flooded the heavens with lunar glare. But in northern Norway, the sky was mainly green. Marianne Bergli took this picture while Trick or Treating in Kvaløya.
“What a great start to Halloween,” says Bergli. “The full Moon lit up the landscape and our wonderful mountains, while the Green Lady danced overhead. I just love this.”
The night after Halloween could be even better, if a slow-moving CME grazes Earth’s magnetic field as predicted by NOAA. Stay tuned for more.
[bottom] HALLOWEEN MOONRISE: You know it must be Halloween when the full Moon turns into a candy dish. “That’s what the Moon looked like last night when it rose over Raritan Bay,” reports Jim Haklar of South Amboy, New Jersey. “I documented the phenomenon with this snapshot.”
“This is how it actually looked,” he says, “only slightly lightened and sharpened with Photoshop.”
What happened to the normally round lunar disk? The top was blocked by a line of low-hanging clouds, while the bottom was deformed by a mirage. It’s called an “inferior mirage.” A layer of warm air near the sea surface creates an inverted image of the Moon, which smushes together with the actual Moon above it, forming the pedestal of the candy dish. …
